American Samoa's coral reefs have been impacted by a variety of major events, including periodic severe hurricanes, the most recent of which was Hurricane Heta, which was closest on Jan 6, 2004. Other events have included a Crown-of-Thorns seastar outbreak in 1974 and night scuba spearfishing from 1994-2002. Mass coral bleaching occurred in 1994 and then again in the summers of 2002 and 2003, and the bleaching was severe enough to kill some corals. Bi-weekly surveys were made of the reefs at Airport Lagoon. During the peak of the summer bleaching, surveys were made at five other locations. The data given with this data set refer to the percent corals bleached within the survey area.

Purpose:

To understand the annual cycle and status in 2004 of coral bleaching at Airport Lagoon, American Samoa.

Status of coral reefs on the main volcanic islands of American Samoa: a resurvey of long term monitoring sites (benthic communities, fish communities, and key macroinvertebrates)

Other_Citation_Details:

Report to Dept. Marine & Wildlife Resources, American Samoa. 86 pp.

Type_of_Source_Media: paper

Source_Time_Period_of_Content:

Time_Period_Information:

Single_Date/Time:

Calendar_Date: 2002

Source_Currentness_Reference: publication date

Source_Citation_Abbreviation: Green, 2002

Source_Contribution: coral reef status study

Process_Step:

Process_Description:

The percentage of bleached colonies was estimated visually and mentally following a roughly one-hour swim in the lagoon along roughly the same path. The swimming rate was steady and moderate for a SCUBA diver wearing fins. This method results in course resolution. Accuracy subjectly estimated at 10-20%. Craig, P., Birkeland C, Belliveau S. 2001. High temperatures tolerated by a diverse assemblage of shallow-water corals in American Samoa. Coral Reefs 20: 185-189. Goreau, T. J., and Hayes, R. L. 1994. A survey of coral reef bleaching in the south central Pacific during 1994. Report to Coral Reef Intiative, U.S. Dept of State. 118 pp, 54 figures. Green, A. 2002. Status of coral reefs on the main volcanic islands of American Samoa: a resurvey of long term monitoring sites (benthic communities, fish communities, and key macroinvertebrates). Report to Dept. Marine & Wildlife Resources, American Samoa. 86 pp.

Original data received in MS Excel spreadsheet in file, ../../data/Bleaching.xls. A redundant ASCII copy was placed in ../../data/Bleaching.csv.The original report was provided in MS Word,../../data/2004_Bleaching_report.docwith a redundant ASCII copy in../../data/2004_Bleaching_report.txt

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